The Secret Chamber (25 page)

The rain intensified, coming down in vertical sheets. White bursts of lightning flashed across the sky followed by rolls of thunder. Both of them were absolutely sodden, their clothes clinging to their bodies while their trousers chafed against the skin on the inside of their thighs, rubbing it raw.

Dipping down into a steep ravine, Bear suddenly cried out, losing her footing on the treacherous ground and sliding a few metres on her back in the mud. Her knee jammed against an exposed tree branch, making her cry out in pain, but Luca simply stepped over her and continued running. She stared up at him, cursing under her breath, before pulling herself back on to her feet and sprinting hard to catch up.

Before long, they came upon a massive fallen tree. Its roots, encrusted with clods of earth, jutted out towards the sky. A huge crater in the ground extended round the trunk in a half-moon shape. Bear pulled up, her chest rising in time with her breath. They had been going for six hours and every muscle in her body ached.

‘There might be some cover there,’ she panted. Against
the
main part of the trunk, she could just make out a small area that was sheltered from the rain. It was only a few feet deep, but wide enough to lie down in.

‘I’m stopping,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to rest. At least for a couple of hours.’

Leaving Luca standing out in the rain, she carefully crawled past the roots and into the dry opening a little deeper inside. With her shoulders pressed against the soft earth, she lay flat on her back, letting out a long, ragged breath. She had never felt exhaustion like it. They had barely eaten in over two days and her stomach was cramping from lack of nourishment. On the last two hours of the run, it had got so bad that she had started to feel dizzy and nauseous. She had had to stop and break out the last of the energy bars, but even then, the sick exhaustion had barely left her for a moment.

Bear exhaled again, sinking deeper into the earth. She was absolutely broken. The knowledge that they would have to do this again and again, day after day, if they ever wanted to make it out of the forest alive, made her whole body go limp. It just seemed so impossible, so hopeless.

Luca remained outside with his hands on his hips. He was breathing heavily, blowing the droplets of water off his nose and out into the night. The rain beat down so hard that his hair was slicked flat against his cheeks, while his T-shirt stretched across the muscles of his lower back.

Turning her head to one side, Bear could just make out the top half of his body beyond the line of the roots. She watched him, the anger and frustration of the morning long since
replaced
by a desperate tiredness. A ghost of a smile passed across her lips. They were just as stubborn as each other.

‘You have to get out of the rain,’ she called. ‘Even you need to rest at some point.’

Still Luca didn’t move.

‘Come on. We both need our strength, so let’s rest for a couple of hours then be on our way.’

He turned towards her, his expression hidden by the darkness.

‘Please, Luca.’

Without a word, he came closer, crawling over the roots and squeezing into the opening beside her. She turned her body sideways, pressing herself back against the earth to make room for him. He pulled off his sodden T-shirt and wrung out the water. Bunching it up to use as a pillow, he lay with his back to her, staring out into the night.

Bear was only a few inches away from his back and could feel the damp heat rising from his skin. She let her eyes blur in the darkness, fighting the pain in her shoulder. It had got worse again, sending a dull throb across her entire back.

For several minutes Bear stayed like that, staring into the dark as she tried to relax. But memories of the day kept resurfacing. They came in a relentless cycle, until finally one image drowned out the others, settling across her vision like a sunspot. At first it was little more than a hazy outline with no real detail or substance, but then she understood what it was. It was the Polaroid of her son, pinned to the cockpit of the Cessna. She could clearly see Nathan’s face now, smiling, as he stared straight at the camera.

Bear swallowed, wincing as she felt her throat tighten. Just to see him one more time, to hold him tight against her chest and bury her nose deep in the curls of his hair, was all she wanted now. Her nostrils flared as she tried to conjure up his smell. She knew it so well, but now she couldn’t place it; there was nothing but the damp earthiness all around. Closing her eyes, she tried to picture his face again, but it had warped this time, turning instead to the faces of the pygmy boys.

Bear sniffed loudly, feeling shame well up inside her. Before she even realised what was happening, she found herself trying to stifle sobs. Tears ran down her cheeks, making her eyes burn, and she sniffed again, trying to hold it all back. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t stop herself from imagining her own son being ripped to pieces by bullets.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bear whispered, raising her hand to touch Luca’s back. There was no answer, so she held her hand where it was, her fingertips millimetres from his skin.

‘You didn’t deserve what I said this morning. You were right. We shouldn’t have got those boys involved.’

Luca remained facing outwards, his body rigid. Bear felt herself willing him to respond, to say something to console her. The tiredness and fear had broken her down and now she felt a physical need for Luca’s affirmation, for him simply to say that it was going to be all right, and that they would make it though.

‘Say something, Luca.’

He turned until he was facing her. She could just make out the profile of his face in the dim light, and the wet strands of his hair.

‘There’s more,’ Bear added, the words so quiet that they caught on her breath. ‘More to me, I mean. I do care what happened to those boys, but I just couldn’t deal with it then. Couldn’t face up to what had happened.’

She waited, trying to read his expression, but it was too dark. She tried to stop herself from feeling this way, to hold back, but already knew that she wanted more from him. Needed it. Inching her body closer, her lips found his in the dark. They pressed together, the kiss filled with uncertainty, and for several seconds, they just lay there, their lips the only point of contact between them. Then Luca slowly moved his arm out across the ground so that Bear’s head rested ontop his bicep. She moved in closer, pressing her whole body against his.

Pushing him on to his back, Bear swung herself on top so that her legs straddled his waist. Pulling off her top, she unclipped her bra and flung it to one side, wincing as the strap went over her damaged shoulder.

‘Why …’ Luca began, but she gently pulled him up towards her and silenced him with another kiss. Luca leaned back on his hands with his chin tilted up towards her. She could feel his hands slowly move down her back, smoothing her skin as far as her hips. They came round to her belt, tugging the leather backwards as he freed the buckle.

In the darkness, Bear received only jumbled impressions, each movement merging into the next as they made love. There was nothing else but where they were right then, and the incredible feeling of longing mixed with pleasure. It went on and on, neither of them wanting the sensation to
end
, as they escaped from the reality of everything else around them. Finally Bear collapsed down onto him and lay still, her skin shining with sweat. She was breathing hard and as she reached forward to kiss him once again, he could feel a smile on her lips.

For several minutes they lay like that, neither of them wanting to speak or by extension deal with the implications of what had just happened. They just listened to the sound of the rain beating against the leaves, with their legs intertwined and Bear lying flat against Luca’s chest. He brought his right hand up, running it slowly down the length of her back, feeling every inch of her supple skin. As he reached her waist, his fingers connected with a thin beaded chain that he hadn’t noticed before despite her being naked, and he let his fingers play across it.

‘My mother gave it to me,’ Bear whispered, not raising her head from his chest. ‘It was the last thing she gave me before leaving me on the streets in Bunia.’

‘How old were you?’

‘I was four.’

Bear sighed heavily, the air blowing out across Luca’s chest. ‘She came back to Bunia a few years later with this man I’d never seen before. I was there, lice in my hair, living off whatever I could find in the rubbish. So she shaved my head and gave me a huge pink dressing gown and some sandals that were meant for a boy. And that was the last time I ever saw her.’

Luca brought his hand up to her neck, his fingers gently playing with her hair.

‘This place is just so screwed up,’ she whispered. ‘Stories like that happen every single day.’

Luca remained still. ‘You know, earlier this morning, you were right. I don’t understand any of this and shouldn’t have judged you like that. Life is totally different out here. I mean, where I come from, you just don’t get mothers abandoning their kids.’

As he said the last words, Bear crossed her arms over her chest, feeling a sudden need to cover up. It was as if she could feel the reality of their situation catching up with them, ripping the moment apart. Everything else in her life came flooding back, the image of Nathan now so clear in her mind, and with it, the desire to be with him suddenly emptied.

Dragging the filthy vest up from the ground, she pulled it over her shoulders.

‘You’re going to try for the volcano tomorrow, aren’t you?’ she said, changing the subject.

‘If that is a mine, then I think there’s a good chance Joshua’s still alive. There isn’t any reason to kill him if they are putting men to work. But you don’t have to worry, Bear. I won’t leave you out here by yourself.’

‘
Eh! Je peux prendre soin de moi
,’ I can take care of myself, Bear snapped ‘I don’t need your help in the jungle.’

‘I know,’ Luca replied, raising his hands defensively. ‘Trust me, I know. If we could get around the back of the volcano and somehow find those tunnels that Lanso mentioned, we might be able to get into the mine unseen.’

‘This is the LRA, Luca. If we get caught …’

‘We’re not going to get caught. I promise you that.’

Bear exhaled deeply, shutting her eyes in the darkness. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’

There was a long pause before Luca broke the silence. ‘All I know is that for the last two years I have been hiding from the world, and now there is this way for me to make up for it all. I have to see if he is in there, Bear. I
have
to do this. The question is – what are you going to do?’

‘Me?’

‘Come on, tell me.’

A bitter smile crossed her lips.

‘I’ve just broken the only real promise I ever made to my husband, so what the hell am I supposed to feel?’

Settling back into the earth with her arms pressed across her chest, she stared out rigidly into the darkness. When she spoke, her voice seemed to be devoid of any emotion.

‘I’ll finish my job and trace the sample back to the mine. After that, I’m going to get as far as I can from this godforsaken place.’

THE PILOT OF
the Oryx Mk2 helicopter glanced down at the GPS navigation system on the console before staring out across the trees of the Ituri Forest. He then raised his gloved hand with two fingers outstretched. Xie stared at it blankly before General Jian’s voice came in over the headset.

‘
We land in two minutes
,’ he explained in Mandarin, his voice terse. He was sitting on the opposite side of the open cabin wearing full military uniform, with immaculately polished boots and a pressed green jacket adorned by sparkling epaulettes. At his feet was the metal Pelican case that he had carefully loaded on to the helicopter when they first set out.

Jian stared across at Xie for a moment, his black pupils smouldering with annoyance. Kai’s insistence that Xie should fly all the way out from Shanghai to accompany him for the final payment had to mean something. Even if they hadn’t gone as far as to connect the dummy satellite launch with the missing funds, Xie’s mere presence was significant. That much Jian was sure of. From now on he would have to
tighten
his grip on the situation, ensure that nothing was left to chance.

Jian’s concentration wavered as another stab of pain shot through his temples. The pain was just maddening. Despite already swallowing all the painkillers he was prescribed for one day, he felt as if his skull was about to tear in two with each thud of the rotors. The pain was like nothing he had ever known before, and shutting his eyes, he slowly scratched the dried patch of skin at the side of his collar, willing the flight to end.

Xie sat facing him, with one leg crossed over the other, wearing the same brown linen suit as he had the previous day. The fabric was bunched up under his armpits, gradually darkening from sweat as the flight across the forest dragged on. He stared into the General’s face; at his tightly shut eyes and thin, pursed lips. At some point in the recent past, Jian must have shaved off a moustache because the subtle hint of a tan line still remained. His hair also looked different and was now smartly cropped in the military fashion, shaved almost to the skin at the sides. It wasn’t Jian’s style to look so formal, and Xie wondered about the reason for the change.